AMERICAN LITERATURE 69
Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of
God.
Emerson's next challenge to conservative
thought was dramatic. In 1837, in a Phi Beta
Kappa address to an audience which included
Josiah Quincy, Daniel Webster, Thoreau, and
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., he adapted his con-
cept of "the primacy of the soul" to the
scholar, and, in particular, to the scholar in
American life. He gave a memorable defini-
tion; the scholar, he said, was "Man Think-
ing". Three influences moulded the true scho-
lar: Nature, Books, and Action. Finally, he
attained his climax: "Patience, patience . . .
we will work with our own hands." Respect-
ability was outraged; the young minister had
slighted the Bible, had been pantheistic! But
in the following year in An Address to the
Senior Class of Divinity College he added that
Christianity "dwells with noxious exaggera-
tion about the person of Jesus"; fervently he
urged his hearers to approach God as pure
spirit, without the profanation of theology
or any intermediary. Then, though battered
on all sides, he fell silent. "I cannot argue", he
said.
Beneath the three essays, containing in es-
sence the gospel of Emerson, lay a single
philosophical concept: "There is one man".
All, the humblest or Jesus himself, are parts
of this "delegated intellect". The veil and the
symbol of God are nature. Through under-